Social Justice in Buddhism | Are therapy & activism a distraction from the Dharma?

Stick with me. . . . Here we go!!

A friend invited me over to try some of his blue Methylene nootropic (don't ask) and I caught him in the middle of a Facebook fight with a Zen teacher who is also a psychologist. My friend holds that psychology addresses the broken self, but Buddhism addresses the whole self and gets to the bottom of human suffering. My friend holds that psychology (arguably) looks away from the root of the problem, and he feels that ultimately we should put our energy not into changing ourselves or the world, but into seeing through the illusion of ego, in which case both we and the world change on their/our own.

Okay. Got all that??

I found his argument to be compelling if not entirely convincing. It was, on this day, that I wound up soaking wet on a train while reading a very sad news story on my phone about a young woman who had been killed by terrorists. It was really a heartbreaking story, and I couldn't help but think about the question of social justice from the Buddhist standpoint.

Can we do any good in this world? Can we make the world a better place? Or is the world, the universe, okay on its own, without our meddling? Are our efforts better spent seeing through our own personal and shared illusions about the world than trying to change/improve said world? A combination of both approaches?

Tough topics. This video's about them.

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